Shanghai Shorts: Racial Silliness Redux

So, I yelled at a white guy today.

I was on the metro, playing on my DS, and at Nanjing West Road station, on comes this white dude and his Asian coworker. They talk mostly in English but with snippets of Chinese, and from what I can tell the dude is either American, Canadian, or possibly Dutch.

Anyway. Jingan Temple, my station, comes up. I step forward to the door as the train slows down and the station appears beyond the train window. I very softly murmur "excuse me" to the white guy, who was standing just in front and to the side of me.

No response.

I say it again, slightly louder, still with polite tones.

No response.

I say it a third time and he responds, but not with a reaction I'd become accustomed to in all the other parts of the world I've visited or lived in. He moves out of the way and snaps, "We're not even there yet" in Chinese. ("我们还没到。")

So I frown and without turning to look at him, I say very casually but clearly, "Well, we're close, and where I come from that means you move toward the door so that you don't hold up traffic when it comes time to exit."

No response.

"I thought I was very polite. No need for the attitude," I add, with the unmistakable aggressive tone that I often use when crossed.

The doors swish open and I step out, hearing his Asian coworker (who sounded like he was from Hong Kong from his accent) laugh as I do so.

What I was tempted to say was, "If I were a white chick, you'd have gotten out of the way the first time I asked instead of thinking you've better manners than me just because I'm Chinese. You are the kind of foreigner that gives all the rest of them (us?) a bad name."

But I didn't. I had better things to do than deal with stupid little boys.

Now I don't go around looking for reasons to be mad (when I'm sober). But I don't think any of you can deny that if I were in fact a white chick, he wouldn't have had the nerve to snap back at me for just politely saying "excuse me" while getting ready to get off the fucking train.

Where *I* come from, when someone says "excuse me" to you, you apologize and get out of the fucking way.

This sort of silliness really does come from both sides. Sigh.

Shanghai Shorts: Horns a'Honking

I flipped off a taxi driver this morning.

Knowing me, you're likely thinking to yourself, "what else is new?"

I don't actually run around flipping off random strangers, you know. Today, I had a particularly good reason.

I woke up a little late for work so I had to cab it instead of taking the metro. My office is inside a hotel compound and its main entrance opens to this single-lane, one-way little paved bit of street.

So the cab pulls up to the main entrance and before he even comes to a full stop, I hear that noise that all of us in China have since grown accustomed to hearing whether it's necessary for it to be produced or not: the honking of a horn.

Once, twice, three times more as I get my cash out of my wallet to pay my cabbie. I am getting annoyed. It's not like I'm being slow like some of the other people we also see in this city, taking hours on hours to get out of a cab (and even then you are generally courteous and wait on them if necessary, you don't want them to leave shit behind just because you're an impatient little cocksucker, there is usually no reason to rush someone getting out of a cab no matter how long they take).

I whirl around in my seat and glare at the driver through two sheets of glass. The honking stops.

I thank my taxi driver, step out of the cab, and walk round to the back of it to stand right in front of the honking taxi behind us. I stand right in front of his cab so that he can't go even as my own cab takes off. I lean forward, and, with a nasty look on my face, up goes my middle finger.

And off I go into my office, making it to my seat with minutes to spare.

Why this city feels it's necessary to honk at EVERY SINGLE THING in the goddamn street, I'll never know. I recently heard a story about a bus driver honking at a bike rider who'd fallen off his bike after a collision with another cyclist and couldn't get back up, and because the dude on the ground was "in the way," the bus driver then, very annoyed, steered his bus around the obviously injured man.

What the fuck, Shanghai.

Shanghai Shorts: Racial Silliness

Recently I've been getting a lot of calls at my current workplace. All of them call, speaking in English, looking for the owner, a foreigner with a very Western-sounding name. He's not in the habit of taking calls from people he doesn't know so I do what I can to deter them. (I am, for the record, not his secretary; my phone number just happens to be his old contact one.)

Sometimes they'll catch on and realize that okay maybe this dude isn't the way to go, maybe I can give them the name of our company's CEO instead?

So I'll prod and pry and see how likely it is that it is a sales call and sometimes I'll go, okay they seem legit, I'll give them my boss's name.

My boss, like me, is also a foreigner, but he's Chinese by race and his name reveals as much.

The second the person on the other end hears the name, their reaction changes. They ask "Oh is he Chinese?" Expressions of shock abound!

So I'll ask them, in a very sharp tone, "Is there a problem?"

They'll stammer and mutter and you KNOW there is a problem just based on a violent shift in their attitude, but they'll eventually realize they gave themselves away and then recollect themselves and say "No, there's no problem, I would just like to know if he's Chinese."

Then I get playful. "What difference does it make?"

"No difference, ma'am, we would just like to know."

I decide to test my theory. "He's a foreign-born Chinese."

"Ahhhhh, foreign-born Chinese. Okay okay. Yeah it's just... *lots of hesitant stammering* no problem, no problem."

"Would there have been a problem if he wasn't a foreign-born Chinese? I would imagine if you're sending business documents that they should go to the right person in the right position."

"No ma'am, no difference. I'll send the documents within the hour. Thanks for your help, goodbye!"

This is just the tamer of the phone calls. Once I got a call from a Chinese speaking woman asking if any foreigners worked at our office. I said yes, there were two, me and my boss. She asked for our names because she wanted to send us a free expat-only magazine. I gave her our names. She said, "Hang on, are these people Chinese?"

I snapped and said, in English, "You asked if we were foreigners, and I answered you honestly. Neither of us hold Chinese passports. We are expats working in Shanghai. Is there a problem? Are you calling me a liar?"

She stammered, clearly not fully understanding what I was saying nor how to react, and told me, now in English, to "hold on" as she'd talk to her manager. She returns some minutes later saying, "I apologize, there's been a misunderstanding. Sorry, I didn't mean to waste your time." And she hangs up.

Don't get me started on a rant about how Chinese people are treated like second-class citizens on their own goddamn turf BY OTHER CHINESE PEOPLE. I thought this shit was over and done with last century, guys.

I know that expats are a target group for specific marketing campaigns and initiatives. That's fine. That's narrowing a target demographic, everyone does it. But racial profiling WITHIN the group of expats, just because we're not white or not visibly distinct from Chinese people? We took the fucking time to learn to speak multiple languages fluently, to understand multiple cultures, and this is the thanks we get?

Shanghai may like to call itself "modern" and "progressive" and "multicultural" but man the shit some of these people pull is pretty fucking archaic, if you ask me.

Shanghai Shorts: Squat Pots and Sexy Legs

Anyone who has ever visited Shanghai (or, frankly, any city in China or Southeast Asia) has likely come across what we as English-speakers have affectionately termed "squat pots." These are toilets which are essentially a porcelain-lined hole in the ground, over which you squat and do your business.

Westerners often call them archaic, obsolete, outdated, dirty, and, well, let's face it, a bit physically taxing. Squat pots are generally uncomfortable as you don't get to rest your body down on anything solid, and instead must remain in a squatting position for however long it takes for you to do what you gotta do. On top of that, you're probably worried about the Splatter Effect.

The Chinese, on the other hand, refer to them as clean and efficient. The reason? Well, it does make sense: your butt doesn't actually come into contact with what other people's butts have touched.

The truth is that while Westerners would argue that a proper toilet seat and bowl are "advanced" versions of toilets and generally preferable to squat pots (I myself wander through various Chinese public bathrooms until I find a toilet with a seat), many Chinese argue the opposite.

It is not rare for a Chinese woman to approach a "Western" toilet and stand up on the toilet seat and do what? Squat like they would over a squat pot.

While most modern facilities and buildings do provide the seated toilets rather than the squat pots (because quite frankly the increased Splatter Effect of a squat pot does give also increase a bathroom's the Odor Factor), this doesn't quite change how the toilets are used once the doors are closed.

It's a changing, evolving habit, to be sure. I'm not saying ALL Shanghainese women stand up onto a toilet seat to pee, but a good portion of them do it enough that, well, it makes a good story.

Plus I guess if you have to remain in a squatting position for however long it takes to pinch out a good ol' Numero Dos, you probably come away from the experience with fantastically fit thighs.